Juan Cole

Bombings killed 23 persons in Iraq on Thursday, including, Iraqi officials maintain, 3 US soldiers. The attacks followed on a major bombing Wednesday that left 40 dead and 73 wounded in the largely Shiite, northern Shula district. In Baghdad, guerrillas carried out two significant bombings. One hit a market in Dora district, killing 9 Iraqis […]

The US Congress is refusing to allow President Obama to close the Guantanamo Bay prison, a symbol of torture and abuse. Apparently their vote was driven by fears of public backlash if those detained were brought to prisons in the US. Obama had failed to specify exactly what would happen to the prisoners when the […]

A parked car bomb detonated near a popular restaurant in Shula, a poverty-stricken Shiite neighborhood in northwest Baghdad on Wednesday evening , killing 35 persons and wounding 72. It was the deadliest bombing this year. As. Gen. Ray Odierno said recently, it is not going to stop, right? There will be low-intensity violence of this […]

A roadside bomb hit a US convoy 35 miles outside Kabul, killing one American soldier and one civilian, on Wednesday morning. Aljazeera English reports on the arrival of further US troops in Afghanistan: Meanwhile, the State Department foreign service officers are behind the scenes seething at the possibility that Neoconservative Zalmay Khalilzad may attempt to […]

The Obama-Netanyahu talks were clearly a train wreck for Israel’s far rightwing Likud Party. The talks went on nearly twice as long as scheduled, suggesting a lot of bumps in the road. The two seemed to me stiff in their body language afterward, and they clearly did not agree on virtually anything important. Both finessed […]

Kuwait held non-party elections last weekend for its 50-member parliament, electing 21 new faces. The election for the first time of 4 women (out of 16 who ran) and a doubling of the Shiite representation to 9 from 5 have caused a stir among analysts. Likewise, the Salafi or Sunni fundamentalist groups lost substantial ground. […]

Far rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is meeting Monday with President Barack Obama in Washington. It is the most fateful encounter of two world leaders since Kennedy met Khrushchev. And Obama absolutely must not allow himself to be cowed or misunderstood as timid by Netanyahu, who is a notorious bully and warmonger. (Bill Clinton […]

In the midst of a major Pakistani military campaign against Taliban in Swat Valley, the US operated a drone against South Waziristan, firing missiles at the village of Khaisore in Mirali on Saturday, killing 29 tribesmen meeting at the house of Hikmat Roshan. Dawn adds, “In another incident, helicopters gunship shelled houses of suspected militants […]

Nuri al-Maliki called late Thursday for an end to the consensus system in Iraqi politics, which gives Kurds and sometimes Sunni Arabs a virtual veto over legislation they do not like. In an interview with the American Arabic-language satellite station al-Hurra (which is very little watched) al-Maliki called for majority rule with straight up and […]